Redeemed from Fire by Fire

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The One discharged of sin and error.
The only hope or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre –
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame.
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
-T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

The fire of God’s presence is consuming. Those who wish to know Him will be asked to walk straight into it. Nothing will be expected, but all will be required. Richard Foster describes the intimacy of knowing and walking with God as the incarnational or sacramental life, the “crying need to experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life.” The mystery of God made manifest in Christ destroys or feeble notions of Him, demolishes our own pursuits of security and safety, and dissolves our illusions that we can have life outside of God.

This is what T.S. Eliot refers to here as Love, the unfamiliar Name, who redeems from fire by fire. Our choice concerning God (which is to say, concerning our very lives) is actually rather clear: we are either destroyed by fire or consumed by Love so intense it can only be described as a fire. The way of rescue for us is through the flames of His presence, His life that is “the light of men” (John 1:4). And it is a constant rescue, a constant Presence with us. Moses was led by a flaming torch by night; we are led by the Flaming Torch within, “even unto the ends of the age.” It is not that we possess life, but that we are possessed by Life.

It is this incarnational life with God that has been often left out of the more evangelical church circles. And how can that be, since this intimate communion with God is the very heartbeat of our souls? Without this consuming and mystical connection, our pulse weakens, our skin grows pale and clammy, our hearts grow faint and cold. Calvin Miller, in his book Into the Depths of God, has this foreboding warning: “When the mystery is gone, so is the church – at least the vitality of the church.”

So what of these words by T.S. Eliot? Was he too mystical? Is the mystery of his poetry too far out there? Should it make us uncomfortable and so we turn the other way? Not at all. It is in this mystery, this mystical longing after God and recognition of His heart for us, that is ultimate reality. We cannot ignore our vitality in God, or try to tame the flames of it, without losing our very lives. Jesus said as much – “whoever wants to save his life will lose it” (Matthew 16:25).

“God waits,” Calvin Miller continues, “for those who will love him and who hunger for things too excellent to be understood.”

So where do we go from here? How do we come back into intimate communion with God, or rekindle the heat? How do we grow in our love for Him, in our desire for him and those “things too excellent to be understood”? I think the answer has something to do with our fainting, with out gut-level recognition that we cannot get there on our own. We begin by praying not, “Lord, I want you,” but rather the more authentic, “Lord, I want to want you.” Maybe that is all we can muster. But it is all that is required. If we are willing, and only if we choose, we can begin moving deeper into the heat of God’s life. In the same breath, Jesus told us, “but… but… whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says that “there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak… the very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether… your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him… look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” Paul knew this. It is why, I think, he told us in Colossians that “your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

So we are to find it. If God seems distant, it is because He is waiting, “waiting to be wanted,” as A. W. Tozer had it. As our desire for God grows (and only as He births in us deeper desire), we can begin seeking after God, wrestling for Him and praying to taste and touch and see the wonder that is God. “And in Him,” Tozer discovered, “we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.”

If we heed the invitation to delve deeper into this Love, even in the smallest degree, we really can “mount up on wings as eagles” and learn to fly. Calvin Miller again put it, “Earth holds a strange power that ties us to dust, so that ponderous souls are bound to her crust. But the wind whispers tales of a force in the sky, and those with the courage to scorn dust can fly.”

The other morning, I heard whispers from the wind of that invitation into the intimate life with God. I took Him up on it – how could I pass? I recorded what happened next:

The breeze was some cool at that hour, so I put on the hoodie I’d been shouldering, and set out walking south down our street to the wooded area just beyond.

I had set off in the cover of darkness. It was a romantic early morning, and I knew the meeting place. But it was also my choice to go, weighed as my heart was with the need to be away to pray. There were some things I wanted to bring up with God, and He with me.

It was more than an hour I had spent there, and much was addressed in our time, too much to make mention of here, and things perhaps too deep to record – old wounds and accusations from my former life as well as new and enticing promises for my new one, this one, the one extending into forever. The work of Jesus for me. The ministry and counsel of the Holy Spirit. His fire, burning flame of love. The invitation of the Father into more authentic sonship. An heir of His, coheir, coheir (!) with Jesus.

He was so amazing it all of it – God, the Trinity. So strong, so tender, so engaged, so holy. So triumphant. So ready. So prepared. So delighted. So intent on my wholeness and holiness. So alive with life that is my light.